John Bock ~ Ying Liu ~ Silvana McNulty

Things to Consider

7th May 2021 ~ 13th June 2021

Most of the time I like the possibility to work with accessible things, but not when that becomes associated with an idea of precarity. I do not like the idea of not being able to do something because of a lack of access to a specific material or the knowledge of how to manipulate it. I want to think that imagination and art can touch the viewer without the need to use expensive machinery or supplies, and that it depends on the artist’s honesty when using those materials and the viewer’s visualisation that, for example, two yogurt pots and a long piece of string can become a telephone.

It is with this preconceived state of mind, where we have our eyes and senses open to admitting the potential of anything that surrounds us, that I would like to consider the work of the three present artists: John Bock, Ying Liu, and Silvana McNulty. Although it would be inappropriate to think that they work in a similar way, I would like to focus on the connections that I found between their practices and how those can help to amplify the reading of each of their works. Their shared use of accessible materials as a starting point can allow us to enter easily into their works, which can then lead to different approaches. In the work of John Bock we can see how the use of quotidian materials such as cables, cardboard, or paper, become fused together to create a whole, proposing a new space or object that takes on new meaning.

The practice of Ying Liu shares a similar interest in using accessible materials, although these are more often things that can be found in the domestic environment. In her practice she is interested in enacting persistent gestures with daily and fragile materials and how making as a process is sometimes more interesting for her than the final result. She produces works that, perhaps in the line of conceptual art, are more thought of for their concept than for their final visualisation. It is in this interest in the repetition of gestures that we can find the work of Silvana McNulty. Silvana uses techniques that require a lot of time and attention, repeating a movement again and again, back and forth. These allow both the artist and the viewer to become immersed in the details and care that Silvana imprints onto her works. When we zoom out we can look at the constructions that Silvana produces as potential architectures or models for larger pieces, but we could be wrong and it might be in that small scale that its potential rests.This idea of the constructions being potential models for something else is what I had in mind when the first thoughts for this exhibition sprouted in my mind, but I am happy that through rethinking I also felt that it is not necessary that everything is a proposal for something larger, but that it can be in the modest or the ordinary where we can also find an escape, an opportunity to slow down rather than making the most out of less. What do you think?